


Take Ahold of What Belongs to Me

by theLiterator



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Damian Wayne is Redbird, Jealousy, M/M, capers, dickdamiweek2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-04
Updated: 2016-09-04
Packaged: 2018-08-12 23:50:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7953889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theLiterator/pseuds/theLiterator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Damian has been pairing up with all sorts of people who aren't Dick, lately, and Dick has been driving everyone nuts with his jealousy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take Ahold of What Belongs to Me

“So I was talking to Tim yesterday,” Grayson said around a mouthful of Pennyworth’s oatmeal cookies. _Damian’s_ oatmeal cookies, baked especially because Damian had announced that he was taking Saturday off to catch up with his coursework.

Damian forced himself to ignore Grayson’s antics and made a notation on his homework.

“He said you and Jason helped him close that case down at the docks?” Grayson continued.

Damian made a serious error and looked up, getting caught for a moment, in Grayson’s eyes. They seemed particularly… blue today, like the brightest blue of the sky on a summer day. He jerked his gaze away.

Damian pointedly turned the page in his textbook and made a noncommittal noise. Usually, Grayson would get bored within a few minutes and leave Damian to his own devices.

Grayson leaned over Damian’s shoulder, chewing loudly in his ear. “Ooh, Digital Circuit Design and Analysis? That was… not a class I took. Ever.” His body was warm against Damian’s, and he shivered in response, then bit his lip, hoping that Grayson wouldn’t notice-- but of course he wouldn’t.

His breath was warm against Damian’s cheek and Damian tried to fight down the visceral response his body had to Grayson’s nearness. He would leave soon, Damian repeated to himself. He stared at the page, not able to read a single word of it.

He risked another glance at Grayson. In profile, his eyes weren’t so captivating, but the nearness of his cheek was something of an overwhelming temptation to Damian, and he gripped his pencil tightly to keep himself from doing something rash, idiotic, irreparable.

Like stroke it-- and he had pictured in great detail what Grayson’s cheek might feel like under his fingers… he’d pictured a _lot_ of things.

“Anyway, so I was talking to Tim, and then I realized, before you started that case, you were working with Bart and Cassie, and before _that_ you and Kori and Jessica had a thing going on involving some sort of extraterrestrial drug ring, and then before that--”

“What do you _want?_ ” Damian demanded, slamming his book shut and whirling on Dick, who held up his hands and took a couple of steps back.

“Damian, what’s wrong? Why don’t you want to work with me anymore? I mean… Tim? I love Tim, don’t get me wrong, but you… don’t. Do you remember that time you--”

“What’s wrong is you! Just _leave me alone!_ ” Damian snarled, advancing on Grayson.

Grayson dropped the rest of his cookies, then crouched to pick them up in a rush before fleeing.

Damian turned back to his work and glared at it, like _it_ had been the cause of the problem.

A headache throbbed behind his eyes.

With a single motion, the book impacted the wall, leaving a sizable scuffmark for Pennyworth to tut over.

“I hate you,” he growled quietly, and then he opened up the window so he could be sure he wouldn’t encounter Grayson in leaving.

***

A few nights later, Damian was working with Batgirl on a case involving an illegal dogfighting ring, about to break into their primary suspect’s apartment in search of evidence, when she stopped and cocked her head, listening to a private transmission on comms.

“Sure, yeah; I’m with Redbird. What’s up?”

Damian wrinkled his face and shook his head, gesturing at the side of the building they needed to scale. She held up her index finger and turned slightly away.

Damian sighed and leaned against the wall.

“Yeah, no, of course we don’t mind back-up. Why would you say--”

Damian opened his mouth to interrupt, and she snapped her fingers at him. He rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest.

“Sure, yeah, no. Definitely could use a third. I’m not exactly a heavy hitter, and did you hear Cass last week? He’s had another growth spurt. He _rolled_ his _ankle_.”

Damian snarled soundlessly at her, and she mimed laughing at him.

“Yeah, okay. Five minutes.”

She turned to Damian. “That was Nightwing,” she said. “He’s gonna play lookout for us.”

“Nightwing?” Damian asked, breath catching in his throat.

“Yeah. Nightwing. You remember him? About yay-tall, blue eyes, fantastic ass?” Stephanie was mocking him, but Damian was feeling something akin to panic at the idea of working with Nightwing-- a partnership he’d managed to avoid for _months_.

“I know who he _is_ ,” Damian snapped.

“Yeah?” Batgirl replied, voice a question. “We’ve got five minutes before he gets here; you wanna tell me what’s up?”

Five minutes.

Damian sighed. That was plenty of time for a head start. He fired his grapple and left before she could react.

***

“I don’t understand what’s going on,” Dick complained, but the Riddler just made a dismissive noise and dragged him further into the gloomy, abandoned basement.

It was just as well; the Riddler tended to enjoy it when he’d confused them, after all, and Dick could have accidentally been laying the ground for some sort of villainous monologue.

Not the he seemed particularly villainous tonight, but still-- he shouldn’t have risked it.

He’d been patrolling alone, since most of his usual patrol partners were sick of him grilling them about what they’d been working on with Redbird, and wouldn’t deal with him until he’d “Figured out his little jealousy problem,” as Batgirl had put it when he’d arrived to provide backup and found Redbird already gone.

Riddler had appeared out of nowhere, and said, “What withers in the moonlight and flourishes in the dark?” which hadn’t even been a real riddle, a fact that Dick had complained about twice already, and then started dragging him toward an abandoned basement.

After another five minutes of creeping through stacked boxes and descending _another_ set of stairs, Dick was about ready to knock the guy out and drag him back out to the streets, when they came to a locked door.

The Riddler produced a key, and Dick rolled his eyes, but he didn’t hesitate in following the man. “Look, you know I actually trust you, righ--?” he began, only to be faced with Redbird, bound to a chair, and gagged.

“What the hell?” Dick demanded, slamming Riddler against a wall and seeing red for a few seconds.

“One must always guard against edged wit and edged blades!” Riddler said gleefully, and Dick dropped him. “There, now everyone will _stop worrying_ ,” he added, enigmatically, and darted away. The door locked with a telltale click behind him, and Dick rubbed his forehead.

Right. Okay, so there was _probably_ a reason he was the only person in their family who really trusted him, and he should definitely keep that in mind, going forward.

Still, once he had Redbird free, they’d probably be able to get out of the room fairly easily: the door seemed fairly solid, but the lock had looked standard, and neither of them was really quite at Jason’s or Selina’s level when it came to picking locks, but they could still manage pretty well.

Dick cut through the knot holding Redbird’s gag in place. “What happened? How did _Riddler_ get you?”

“He didn’t,” Redbird replied coolly. “Nightwing, I’ve got this.”

Dick snorted and moved around the chair. Redbird had gotten one of his gauntlets off and he could see blood where he’d torn a fingernail picking at the knotted rope.

“Sure, yeah, if I give you another hour, I’m absolutely positive you’d be able to get free. But, on second thought, I have a _knife_ and that takes about three seconds and you won’t have to rip out half your fingernails in the meantime.”

Dick didn’t have to be in front of Redbird to know he was scowling full force. “Edged blade _indeed,_ ” he muttered to himself. “Who got you, then?”

“Kyle,” Redbird replied after a few moments, and Dick set his knife against the ropes and cut them loose with a solid motion.

“Catwoman?” Dick asked, to be sure. He’d been working with her, just yesterday, in fact, on someone who’d been targeting girls in her territory. It’d been messy, and she’d told him not to bother coming back.

“No,” Redbird replied. “ _Kyle_. She was wearing an evening gown. She called me… ‘sweetheart’.” He spat the endearment out like it was a bitter insult.

Probably, Dick thought, to him it was.

“She said she was sick of your jealous whining and that she was going to ‘do something about me,’” he added, sounding confused.

Dick felt his heart sink down to somewhere in the vicinity of his knees and tried, frantically, to think of something to say.

“Did… uh… what?”

Redbird scoffed and Dick smiled a little, pleased, despite the circumstances, at the familiar sound of disgust. It had been a long time since he’d been able to get Damian talking enough to elicit that level of derision. Months at least.

And he’d been patrolling with _everyone_ but him, in the meantime. Tim! He’d patrolled with _Tim_ instead of Dick, and that was…

Jealousy-inducing, to say the least.

And he’d bitched about it the entire time he’d been out with Catwoman, so no wonder she’d--

Redbird disentangled himself the rest of the way from the chair and bolted to the far side of the room, where he pressed his back to the wall and glared at Dick with enough potency that he could sense it even through the white lenses of the mask.

Dick sighed.

“Look, I know I’m the _last_ person you wanted to see tonight, but--”

Redbird snorted. “No.” he said.

“No?” Dick asked. “But last week you said--”

“You are the _first_ person I want to see,” Redbird said carefully, and then he reached up and un-peeled the domino from over his eyes.

“Yeah, because that makes total sense,” Dick replied carefully, watching Damian intently, senses on high alert. Redbird was predictable; a partner, an ally, former protege. Everything he knew about fighting crime had been learned at Dick’s side, or at Bruce’s. Damian Wayne, on the other hand, was _not_.

“I am… a teenager,” Damian said slowly.

“Not for long!” Dick chirped.

Damian narrowed his eyes at Dick and Dick bit his lip, resolving to hear him out. He’d been wanting Damian to just _talk_ to him for weeks, after all.

“I am… awash with hormones,” Damian continued, and Dick managed to hold his silence but he did roll his eyes again. “I cannot focus properly. And you…”

He growled and whirled to pound the hand still protected with kevlar and ceramic plating into the wall. “You are _attractive_ ,” Damian all but spat.

Well, way to make a guy feel good about himself, Dick thought wryly. Nothing like acting like that was a _death curse_ to give someone a self-esteem boost.

“Wait, is that why you’ve been going out with… with _Tim_? Because I’m _pretty_? Because you’re not exactly hard to look at yourself, you know. I mean of course you’re handsome, you’ve got _Bruce_ for a dad, and everyone knows Talia’s hot, and you’re way younger than me. I’m sure you can-- wait. What?”

Damian sighed and turned back to face Dick. “Nightwing, you’re an idiot,” he said. “Unlock the door. I’d like to go home now.”

“I’m not an idiot,” Dick replied automatically. “Also, no. Because that _isn’t_ the problem. And I get the feeling that if we try to leave before we figure this out that Ivy and Harley will have their own tricks waiting for us.”

Damian shivered at that.

“Yeah,” Dick agreed. They were definitely a little less harmless than Riddler and Selina.

After a moment, Dick peeled off his domino too, and then he sighed really loudly, hoping to get Damian to roll his eyes or quirk a smile, but… he just looked really uncomfortable, and suddenly Dick felt guilty.

“Look, Damian,” Dick said gently. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gotten so… messed up about, about you working with other people. I’m _glad_ you’re working with them! For a long time, I thought-- well. I thought no one would ever see in you the potential I saw. And it’s good that they do! And I shouldn’t complain about it, but…”

“Drake,” Damian said. “I should have seen how that would draw your attention. It was a mistake on my part.” Left unspoken was ‘one I won’t repeat’.

Dick sighed and backed up until he was against the opposite wall from Damian and then slid down it until his ass hit the floor.

They sat in silence for long minutes, very carefully not making eye-contact, until, “Do you see me as an adult, Grayson?” Damian asked.

Dick jerked with surprise, almost as caught out by the contents of the question as the fact that Damian had been the one to break the silence between them.

“Damian,” Dick said seriously. “I don’t think you were ever a _kid_.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Damian said, suddenly rising to his feet and crossing the floor so that he was glaring down at Dick. It _should_ have been intimidating, Dick knew. A lot of people were intimidated by Damian’s glares, even the people who should have built up immunity just by long exposure. It wasn’t.

Dick raised an eyebrow. “If you think I’m being a mother-hen, getting upset about you fledging out into the big wide world or something, that’s… not it.” He smirked a little, more at himself than anything. “You’re _definitely_ an adult, Damian. I just miss spending time with you. With _just_ you.”

Damian nodded sharply, twice, and then he dropped to a crouch just next to Dick, and reached for him with his ungloved hand. Dick flinched a little, but Damian didn’t do anything to hurt him, just brushed the very tips of his fingers along Dick’s cheekbone, staring intently at it. Dick felt suddenly very _objectified_ , like his cheek was more important than the entire rest of him, which was just _strange_.

“Dami--”

“Richard,” Damian said sharply, cutting him off, and Dick’s lips parted on a gasp of surprise, because he could count on one hand the number of times Damian had used his given name, and then--

Dry lips brushed against his, and suddenly everything made sense, and Dick was stuck trying to parse through the sudden mess of his thoughts and his emotions, while his body-- finely trained to act on instinct even when his head was distracted, kissed Damian, _back_ , hands curling around to pull him down so he was no longer crouched at an awkward angle but straddling Dick’s thighs, and then tilting his head so the kiss went from good to _fantastic_.

Damian groaned, and Dick grinned against his lips, and then Damian drew back and stared at him.

“So,” Dick whispered, unable to help the way he licked his lips. “About Tim.”

Damian smirked at him, looking wicked and slightly feral. “I am _not_ driven to distraction by lust for _Drake_.”

“Good,” Dick said, even though he was pretty sure that he should be protesting that Tim-- much closer to Damian’s age, never having been his mentor, smarter by far and liked and respected by both sides of Damian’s family, might be a better choice. Because Dick was kind of selfish, and he wanted Damian _all to himself_.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt: Jealousy on DickDamiWeek on Tumblr. I’m really sorry how long this got. 2500 words? Sheesh. 
> 
> Damian is 18 or 19 in this (a growth spurt is mentioned, which I didn’t realize was weird in older boys until it was pointed out to me. My brother had a growth spurt at 21, and I was under the impression that boys keep growing until they’re 25 or so. Oops? I think it’s funny though, so I left the reference it. Damian Wayne is, in all things, an outlier.)


End file.
